It is crucial to keep lines of communications alive at all times. There are instances that stall or disrupt the continuous service that these communications provide. A network outage is an interruption in availability of the system due to a communication failure of the network. Reasons for a network outage are switch failure, network overload and migration to IP Telephony.
Migration to IP Telephony requires upgrading the network switches to support POE, bandwidth etc. As this transition is happening, network outage will take place. Disruption and delay caused by a network outage results in loss of critical communication such as IP Telephony as well as a significant cost to the organization experiencing the network outage. A power outage or loss of electricity supply can be another interruption to critical equipment such as IP Telephony.
Current solutions to the mentioned disruptions in communications are costly due to the complex nature of network topology. Options include redundant topologies or entire networks that have been replicated. This refers to various routes that communication can travel on; if there is a breakdown at any given point, communication can be re-routed to its destination. This solution could eliminate network downtime and increase reliability, however it can also mean that every single port and switch needs an alternate route, which can be difficult and expensive to set up.
Router clustering is another current solution or method which can help redundancy and therefore reliability of network. In this method, three or more routers are grouped together to combine speed and power and therefore increase redundancy. Another pro-active answer to power outages is uninterruptible power supply (UPS). This method maintains a continuous supply of electricity from a separate source in the event of an outage or abnormality. However, current UPS techniques need new cabling to all networking devices in the chain that need power.
The network environment is lacking a dependable backup system for network communications such as calls placed via an IP telephone. What is needed is a backup system to alleviate or otherwise mitigate at least some of the above-mentioned problems.